Zoom is Killing Your Business

It's 8:03PM and I'm writing this email from a Delta flight.  LGA to STL.

At least once a month, I fly up to NYC for a day with Kasey, my Aux Insights co-founder. 

Usually a day trip.  Never more than 2 days. 

We both have THREE young kids and we hate missing time at home.

Yet we make these journeys which are insanely energizing (they lead to new business, help us come up with new ideas, and let us build new relationships) while being exhausting (wake up at 4:30AM, wear a turban all day, and don't get home til 10PM).

But they are arguably THE SINGLE MOST important thing we do. Why?

Being in person matters.  It's not 50 or even 100 percent better than Zoom.  It’s 10-100x better!

As an example, I had a meeting today with a PE client for 7 minutes (yes, you read that right).

I've Zoomed with him several times.  This time…we both felt more of a connection.  More energy.  And by the end of the conversation, he was brainstorming ways to help us get business.

And this isn't just for people with B2B clients.  Everyone, founder and business leader has stakeholders who they can travel to. 

Today, it may be your remote employees.  Tony Hsieh of Zappos famously treated his vendors like clients, wining and dining them.  Maybe it’s your bank or landlord. 

Regardless, get in person.

Here are a few reasons you need to GET IN PERSON immediately:

This is one of my favorite catchphrases.  I use it to describe so many aspects of leadership. 

How to give feedback.  How to maintain energy in a room.  How to relate to someone facing a difficult situation.

Being in person allows you to be truly human.  It presents the opportunity for vulnerability.  I shared in a bunch of our meetings today that Kasey and I each have 3 kids. 

You can see how people laugh, how they sit and vice versa.  Humanizing yourself and the other person is how relationships form.

Today, we had a 90 minute formal training with a big PE firm.  But the best part? 

As everyone was grabbing lunch and shuffling in, the topic of where everyone grew up came up. 

It allowed some informal bonds to be built and stories to be shared.  It’s difficult if not impossible to do that in a zoom meeting.

Have you EVER stared at your calendar with 6 back-to-back Zooms and thought: WOW, I CAN'T WAIT for the next 3 hours.

NO, you have not.

Because Zoom is stationary.  Sure, you are talking to a person but you're really sitting in a room talking to yourself with a camera/screen in front of you. 

Maybe it will change with VR, but that is today’s reality.

Post-Covid, that has become the norm but it’s not really a fun norm.

This also presents an opportunity. 

Your IN-PERSON meeting becomes the bright spot of someone’s day.  They get away from their screen.  They remember you more because you were IN PERSON, not the blur of Zooms.

Rolling in as someone's 4th back-to-back Zoom meeting is asking to be dismissed, or worse.

Effort matters.  There's a basic principle in sales and marketing known as "reciprocation." 

It’s simple: if you give something to someone, they naturally feel more obligated to give you something back.

Traveling to someone and being in person shows they matter.  It’s a real effort and one that anyone can empathize with. 

Getting up, loading into an airplane, getting a car to a hotel, etc, etc.

The human-to-human interaction is: "Wow, thanks for traveling here to see me."

Effort matters.  Effort is recognized.  Effort is rewarded.

It shows you are serious.  Serious about winning the business.  Serious about what you are doing. 

And that has gravity for any interaction.

Yes Zoom gives you more data than a call (although, lately I've found phone calls to have a quaint intimacy) because you can see their face and reactions. 

But it is NOTHING compared to the data you get in person.

You can learn a lot about someone by sitting in a room with them. 

How do they dress?  Do they check their phone often?  Are they early or late to meetings?

You get a much clearer picture of people’s body language and energy in person.  Whether you're selling or just building a relationship, this is invaluable.

You also give off a lot more data.  Are you confident?  Do you trust your colleagues?  How is your time management?  All of these come through and can build trust in person.

There are more reasons, but I think you get the idea.

Nothing replaces human-to-human interaction to build the most important and precious commodity in business: TRUST.

When you hear about companies doing sales, you could swear one company sells to another.  Or when you read about a $25BN merger.  You think: oh wow, Salesforce bought Slack.

But that's never how it works.

2 humans or more are selling and buying from each other.  

The Salesforce human doesn't think, "I’m buying Slack."

Marc Benioff works with Stuart Butterfield to buy the company. 

The trust between them and likely hundreds of folks on both sides is what actually makes a deal happen.  In-person catalyzes that trust, it matters.

So when are you going to get in person?!

Hit reply and tell me.

-jesse

PS We’re doing a live bootstrap case study with Shaan Puri, host of the “My First Million” pod.

He’s known as a Silicon Valley investor, but he bootstrapped and sold a newsletter. We’ll talk about how he did it and how it compares to the Valley’s model of business-building.

Join the call, here.